Hilgard Mountain Surprise

The plan for today was to go up Hwy 72 and take a back road dirt road across Hilgard Mountain to Fishlake on the other side, eat lunch there, and return home. The back road was 22 miles and we estimated about two hours for the drive, through aspen clusters and various cattle meadows of mostly sage. Very green this year, so very interesting. Most mountain flowers not out yet. Snow visible at the mountain top.

Heading up Last Chance Road, off of the pavement, we could look ahead to Hilgard Mountain; we would climb and stay right of the peak, cross over and go back down.

An early cross roads before starting up the mountain proper.

Actually a pretty good road, interesting views.

A little higher up, through a cluster of aspens.

Nancy likes the Aspens, reminds her of many trips to Colorado over the years.

Red Creek Hole, we stopped, to take some photos with wide views.

This looking generally to the east; the one below is more south, toward home and the Henrys.

A little further up the road, needed four wheel drive for a bit of mud in the road, and some trees down.
The aspen logs are not real heavy, we moved what we could. Went around this one after clearing other pieces away.

We did this two or three times... note how high we are by mountains in background.

About here, we looked ahead, and several trees were down ahead. Nancy stayed in the Jeep, and Annette, Larry and I walked ahead, to see if the "problems" might be insurmountable - no point moving trees if there was one ahead we couldn't pass, or drive over, anyway... Larry said he would bring his chain saw the next time up this one...  ;-)

Here is what we found! We took several photos, of course, here are a couple.

We were about half way on our journey, but, end of journey for this trip.

On the way back, we took this photo of the jeep going over a log.

We stopped once, on the way back down, to look back at where we had been.

That streak of snow, just behind the jeep, may be the snow that stopped us. Almost got a photo of Nancy in the Jeep.

Just after this, we did see some flowers, had to take a photo:

Returning through Fremont, we stopped briefly to see the very old Worthen's building. It was a store for many years - also fixed up for family visitor overflows, they say. Note Direct TV antenna!  ;-)

Loa had a new Tosconos Pizzeria the Larry and Annette had been wanting to visit, so this is where we ate lunch.

Really great pizza - maybe the best even, actually... is that possible?  ;-)

Back home, Larry had set out some old apples for the deer, the night before:

After just one night, some were gone!! They liked them!

It was another very good day!  ;-)